Ports and postponed elections: ‘Game over’ redux

PM Abiy Ahmed being welcomed by President Isaias Afwerki in Asmara, Eritrea, on March 03/2019. Photo: PMO

By Semhal Meles

Addis Abeba – In a piece published on Al Jazeera on February 17, 2025, Mulatu Teshome, a former president of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia (FDRE), made misleading assertions riddled with both mischaracterizations as well as factual errors. Among his many erroneous assertions, perhaps the most absurd was his claim that the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) had ruled the Tigray region since 1975. That was the year of TPLF’s inception. Seventeen years lapsed before the TPLF liberated Ethiopia, in 1991, from the brutality of Mengistu Hailemariam’s regime.

Mulatu Teshome’s piece was immediately followed by the Prime Minister’s issuance of high praise through a letter commending and congratulating the people of Tigray on the 50th anniversary of the TPLF’s founding. This would suggest that he, unlike the former president, is aware of TPLF’s singular contribution to the end of bloody tyranny.

The TPLF achieved this tremendous feat in part by establishing the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF), a coalition of parties representing Ethiopia’s multinational population. The former president held high-level positions ranging from ambassador to cabinet minister and head of state, while Abiy Ahmed, the current prime minister, served as a cabinet minister and the head of a leading cyber spy agency in the EPRDF administration.

The Prime Minister is one of many commentators who have identified TPLF’s refusal to rebrand along with the rest of EPRDF, and the Tigray region’s decision to hold elections within constitutionally dictated bounds, as the dual causes of the barbaric war waged on the people of Tigray in November 2020. He has, in no uncertain terms, and on numerous public occasions, stated that Eritrean involvement was prompted by his invitation. Shortly before the war, Isaias Afwerki too warned that Tigrayan demonstration of electoral democracy would be met with crushing violence.

I leave the task of correcting the many factual errors in Mulatu Teshome’s piece to Al Jazeera’s editorial standards committee and focus exclusively on the opinion piece’s attempt to draw Tigray into the conflict brewing between the Eritrean and Ethiopian regimes.

As the former president noted, just a few years ago, Ethiopia and Eritrea were chummy allies, an alliance that ultimately culminated in committing various crimes against humanity, war crimes, and the crimes of forced deportation, “leaving a wake of devastation in Tigray.”

The people of Tigray have yet to recover from the savagery of the onslaught, which included, but was not limited to, a two-year siege, the use of starvation and rape as weapons of war, a multi-year total communications blackout, and an endless list of massacres in which the Eritrean government is particularly implicated. Neither churches nor mosques were spared in the deliberate targeting of civilian infrastructure, including Al Najashi, a mosque established by the first Islamic Hijra in 615 CE under the protection of the Axumite king Aṣ-ḥamah in present day Tigray.

Equally selective is the Eritrean government’s blanket omission of lands the EEBC awarded Ethiopia

As was also noted in the Prime Minister’s letter of congratulations, Tigray has paid dearly in the defense of Ethiopia, including against Eritrean aggression. The Eritrean government has for some time attempted to cherry pick elements of the Ethiopia-Eritrea Boundary Commission (EEBC) ruling that marked the formal end of the Ethiopian-Eritrean border war. Most recently, its foreign minister took to X (formerly Twitter) to, on the one hand, blame TPLF for initiating the war in contradiction of the ruling, and, on the other, use the ruling to justify the annexation of not just Tigrayan land, but also Tigrayan people. The impact of these actions on, in particular, the minority Irob community, has been devastating.

Equally selective is the Eritrean government’s blanket omission of lands the EEBC awarded Ethiopia. Perhaps because these, in size, if not desirability, exceeded those awarded to Eritrea. It’s unclear why there has been no rush from either Ethiopia or Eritrea to ensure the full and unconditional implementation of the Algiers Agreement.

Despite these aggressions, Tigrayans have, at huge political cost, shown unwavering solidarity with the Eritrean people’s right to self-determination. Much of the dehumanizing rhetoric that popularized ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity amongst Ethiopians was fueled by narratives of TPLF’s “dismemberment” of Ethiopia. Through its recognition of Eritrean independence, the story goes, TPLF left Ethiopia landlocked, an error of judgement it should have corrected through military might during the 1990s border war. That the TPLF did not submit to these pressures, despite decisive battleground outcomes, is a reflection of a principled position on the right to self-determination for all peoples.

It would be unseemly and immoral to make this region the victim of any more diplomatic blunders that may occur between the once allied parties. I speak confidently in stating that, as a people, we in Tigray seek no more war. Mothers should shed no more tears over the senseless loss of their children under any banner, be it Tigrayan, Ethiopian, or Eritrean.

Indeed, as Teshome noted, such blunders could lead to a “belt of chaos stretching from the Sahel to the Horn of Africa…emboldening groups like Al-Shabab and ISIL (ISIS), creating new havens for terror and disrupting global trade through the Red Sea”. To borrow a phrasing from my late father: “let’s avoid dead ends and find new beginnings.” 

Irrespective of geography, Tigray’s leadership should reject any external interference in our internal matters and avoid being sucked into conflict

Many of us have observed with concern as the aspirations of the federal government for access to the sea heightened tensions with various neighbors, notably Somalia and Eritrea. Given that the Permanent Cessation of Hostilities Agreement (COHA) also dictates that the federal government is uniquely mandated to protect Ethiopia’s international borders, including the one Tigray shares with Eritrea, the federal government’s ambitions place Tigray in an awkward geographic position.

Irrespective of geography, Tigray’s leadership should reject any external interference in our internal matters and avoid being sucked into conflict, in the unfortunate event that these tensions lead to war.

Likewise, the international community, too, should see beyond the federal government’s destructive, if predictable, deployment of TPLF as an all-purpose boogeyman to justify everything from the contravention of democracy and massive reversals of developmental gains within Ethiopia, to a bullish approach to the acquisition of a port.

For all its tremendous failings over the past seven years, TPLF has never expressed aspirations for territorial expansion. Nor have the people of Tigray. It is imperative that Tigray’s leadership signal its commitment to peaceful coexistence with all residents of the Horn and our cousins on the other side of the Red Sea.

What has been uniformly expressed by all political actors in Tigray is a desire for the full implementation of COHA. For Tigrayans, the agreement stipulates that our people in occupied lands be liberated, that the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Tigray be respected as per the Ethiopian constitution, and that our rights to elected representation and democratic governance are complied with. Sustaining this most precious peace and implementing COHA is Tigray’s sole and urgent agenda – nothing else. AS